I'd best summarize this book as a poetic rambling, musing over the nature of life and our existence. I liked the art style & found the storyline both odd at times and interesting.This is definitely a story I want to read again and analyze to figure out its' deeper meaning. The whole Patriotic Park incident especially caught my eye.I think one of the important messages of this graphic novel is how life goes on no matter what happens.I like how we were given glimpses to the reactions/aftermath of

it's open mic night at ground zero. if this book has taught me anything, it's that once you run out of big words, switching to stream-of-consciousness is just as ineffective. arguing with 10-centers and commaless run-ons only convinces me that you have a big vocabulary. still, tragedy affects everyone differently. and while i didn't like this particular outlet, i won't say it's garbage. just that, for me, it was grossly unaffecting and left me feeling baited and switched as i paid too much atten...

Freaking floored. Wow. Read this in an hour; completely immersed. Amazing writing AND concept. The art is just phenomenal, too. One could quote this intricate graphic fic all day. Great! Cannot believe it’s so unnoticed. I’ll return to do a more proper review soon...

Reactionary graphic novel to 9/11. Already, it feels outdated. Some of the in jokes in the art, like the hole in the back of the Kennedy head are neat to pick up on, but the story itself is too embedded in a single incident (9/11) to have any degree of universality or longevity. I also wasn't a fan of how the women were used as props and the poem instead of dialogue and narrative. It felt like he was trying to be deep and artistic, but it just reminded me too much of college crit rooms.

Hallucinogenic and poetic; pretty nice to look at but there's not much character or emotion to hang your hat onto... you can tell it's written by a comics writer and that he's trying to be literary because it all reads very first grade with all its edgy similes.

In September 2001, the CEO of the Eter-No-Mark Ultra-Permanent Marker company passes out cold, then wakes up indelibly tatted from head to toe by his own product. Not long afterward, drunk and stoned at the crack of dawn, he witnesses the 9/11 WTC attacks firsthand. Thus commences his epic journey, which includes bedding down two First Ladies (Jackie and Eleanor, if you're interested) & lots of stone-canyon drug-addled visionary nonsense. Rick Veitch's obligatory 9/11 comic is definitely the wei...

What an interesting way to tell a story. The amazing drawings tell the story as the text makes you think about many other things. Basically a high roller in the permanent marker pen industry has his life fall apart which ends up throwing him into different groups of drug takers and alternative thinkers in beautifully odd contexts. There's fires, there's explosions, there's a burning man type festival at the end. And with the meeting of different characters throughout, he rethinks his life from s...

This is arguably the most brilliant graphic novel ever written. Juxtaposing stream of consciousness epic poetry with images of a life that spirals out of control as it sprints paralell to the World Trade Center attacks, Can't Get No is a mind trip through the mundane and the troubled human spirit in the moment of internal and external crisis. A business executive, who has made millions from the sales of a brand of indelible markers becomes a cypher after a bankrupting law suit and a bender that

Utterly bizarre.After 9-11, an ad exec has a breakdown, gets tattooed in "permanent" marker and runs across America (mostly Jersey) discovering the wild, crazy freedoms and lifestyles that exist.It's hard to describe - there is no dialogue, only a running poem-like narration that connects to the images in often allusive ways. I thought it was interesting, though I'm not entirely sure that I liked it. It was an intriguing experiment, and definitely worth it for that (for me, anyway).

Powerful and always on the edge of pomposity, but pulls off its unique vision. This graphic novel follows the path of businessmen whose life falls apart just prior to the 9/11 attacks on the WTC, which results in him in just barely missing being in the WTC during the attacks, and follows his surreal journey in the days after. Instead of dialogue or traditional narration, the text accompanying the images is like epigrammatic poetry, commenting directly or obliquely on the action. This commentary

I tend to disagree with the review that states that the words to this suck. I think that if you look at other pieces that this author has done he has a tendency to think of things in a different way and if you can look past your own ideas of what "sense" is you will realize that there is something to this. I would suggest listening to the podcast if you find yourself confused. I don't think that I would ever suggest just "looking at the pictures" when it comes to any piece of creative written th...

Maybe more toward 3.5

On my TBR pile (214 books waiting to be read) I have a lot of slim graphic novels and books which I’ve had for a while so I’m trying to get through some of them and I’ve had Can’t get no for 10 years.Can’t Get No was a let down. In actuality I thought the story was great! A corporate slave, one day finds himself marked all over with the super permanent pens that his company sells. He then sees himself as a freak but then 9/11 happens and then he experiences the ugly side of America via a road-tr...

Rick Veitch is one of the best comic book artists and writers most people have never heard of. I’ve already reviewed one of my favorite books of his, Shiny Beasts, a collection of short stories. He also worked with Alan Moore on Swamp Thing, and he’s sort of what Alan Moore would be if he were primarily an artist, I believe. Consider this little plug for Rick Veitch’s Can’t Get No: “. . . supremely, magnificently strange, and like nothing else I’ve read.” And that’s from Neil Gaiman, author of S...

I would advise anyone reading this to pay attention to the phenomenal artwork and completely ignore the text; it's just this side of nonsense. I was actually reminded of Bob Dylan's book "Tarantula" in that I was impressed that the author could write so many words and yet still make so little sense.

popsugar challenge 2018: read a book with song lyrics in the titleThis was a weird book, and definitely not for me.

Oh, 9/11. When will you stop sneaking up on me?The visual story of this graphic novel gives in to the utter chaos and rudderless we felt as a nation after we collectively watched the world trade towers collapse, over and over again.The narrative is a wholly different beast, a rambling acid trip of visions and random connections. Reading the narrative and "reading" the graphic images is reminiscent of watching the Wizard of Oz with a Pink Floyd (Dark Side of the Moon) soundtrack. Sometimes the co...

Thoughtful and relevant - very interesting perception of America around 911.

I've long held that Rick Veitch is one of the most talented and underappreciated creators in comics. He's a comic creator's comic creator--both relentlessly experimental, relentlessy personal and relentlessly ambitious. Can't Get No is not for everone. It's an narrative experiment--that I think succeeds. But even so, it's an interesting failure--so its not for the masses. But man, does Veitch draw the hell of the book. He's got the drive and drive of Dave Sim, without the insanity (other than th...

a friend handed me this one, and I do love Veitch so I gave it a whirl. I enjoyed it, and having grown up reading pro anarchist, radical, union, and up-with-community messaged books and comics this was a very familiar trope. it was enjoyable but for a number of things I noticed. of course for the sake of making its message clear it was black and white to a fault. I was upset at how Veitch pictured and drew the female artists who start our protagonist/antagonist on his journey. is this how Veitch...